CanJam NYC 2017: Gamer's Edition
To warm up for my full coverage for the first CanJam in NYC, let's focus on the gaming relative products and news. If I missed a manufacturer or don't say much, it's because the show was VERY well attended, and sometimes I get wrapped up and stay awhile at a place. Also, there are some things I DO want to talk about, like ZMF's new Atticus and Eikon models which I spent a fair amount of time on, but I don't think they're particularly gaming-suited so I won't talk about them here.
Headphones
In the area of headphone drivers, things that were newest to me were usually in the closed-back and IEM categories.
Audeze
'Aw-dez-ee' is traditionally known for their summit-fi planar headphones, but they're pushing down into the hi-fi price range with their EL-8 and Sine models... I read that the open EL-8 is a little more even in the frequency response than the closed model and I'd like a little more time with both, but most interesting to gaming is Audeze's
iSine VR IEMs and their
Tetrahedral Planar Magnetic microphone. If you haven't heard of the iSine yet, they're planar magnetic open-backed IEMs (unique!) that look like you put Tie-Fighter wings onto your ears (hella unique!), but due to CEO Sankar Thiagasamudram's interest in VR they also make a special version with short cables to connect directly to a Vive or Occulus VR headset. No word yet on PS VR compatibility, but I presume you would just get a $399 iSine10 and just plug that into the in-line sound pod on the Sony HMD's cable. They even had an awesome Vive and iSine VR setup at the show where you watched a video on-rails and saw a cool futuristic robot thing, and I have to say I much preferred the clip-less iSine VR to fiddling for a few seconds with the iSine10's clips that holds them against your ear. The detail was astounding, and the imaging worked very well with the VR DSP, the bass is surprising and extends super low, and it's great that they're lightweight but be sure to use the right size eartips. Its also just cool seeing a headphone mfr interested in surround sound and gaming!
Empire Ears
At my last CanJam, I was SUPER SUPER impressed with 64 Audio's ADEL equipped IEMs, and now Empire Ears is using the technology. ADEL modules were created to alleviate the pressure of sound waves, but sonically I have been impressed with the soundstage benefits of the technology that really pairs well with the inherently laser-focused imaging of IEMs and superior sound isolation. Gamers would also love the customization aspect of IEMs too, showing team colors and/or logos, or simply personal style. I heard the top-of-the-line Zeus, which was crazy expensive but crazy articulate and awesome, but even the much more affordable
Spartan 4-driver model was articulate and exciting. I didn't have the time to hear it, but the 3-way
$749 Cerberus with ADEL was within my budget, and the website description says it has deep, clean, textured bass, a touch of mid emphasis, and smooth relaxed treble, great for hearing footsteps and fun explosions and ambiance without masking tactical details and not be irritated by fatiguing high-pitched sounds like flashbangs. I spent the most time with the Spartan... these are super sensitive headphones, I found a little background hiss that was easy to ignore with audio playing while using the Chord Mojo as my DAC/amp, but surprisingly the background was quieter and it was easier to relax and enjoy the sound plugged straight into my iPhone 6S. I love my Chord Mojo and I'm sure there was some ultimate detail, naturalness, and soundstage depth I was missing out on by just using my phone, but just like Vinyl vs Digital I prefer the black background. It could be considered a benefit where I don't feel like I'm not missing out on much even just using a simple phone + IEM setup compared to my much less portable Mojo + Liquid Carbon + HD800 setup I have at home.
Don't forget other IEM makers, some who attended the show but I didn't get time to talk to were 64 Audio and Noble, which also do customs, and Echobox, Atomic Floyd, and 1More which have been making splashes in reviews of their recently released flagships. A good IEM will go toe to toe with a hi-fi or summit-fi over ear headphone for detail and imaging, the balanced armatures used in these perform with quick transients and low distortion like electrostatic headphones, and theoretically they can perform VERY accurately with virtual surround because they skip the effect the outer ear (pinnae).
Stax
Stax didn't officially have any reps at the show, BUT I did get to hear the Omegas 007 and 009 on the Blue Hawaii amp, long considered one of the all-time best setups in personal audio (and still giving the Shangri-La and Orpheus a run for their money), and it was fantastic but priced beyond what most gamers could attain. What WILL be interesting is Stax's newer
SR-L300 Lambda earspeaker, which was in the Smyth "exhibit" room. More on Smyth later. Even though the L300 is the entry-level earspeaker, I heard it recreate astounding frequency response, and was incredibly transparent to the music. These also are much more comfortable than earlier Lambdas, still lightweight but the pads have seen a substantial upgrade in feel and plushness. I watched a Dolby Atmos demo and a clip from the recent Mad Max video, and the L300 did a fantastic job rendering everything from the distant motors roaring and whining, sand swooshing about, and Max's gravelly sonorous voice. I can't speak too much to the L300's native frequency tuning (because the Smyth, LATERRR I PROMISE!) but it had no difficulty with any sound we threw at it (thing reached low and powerful!) and I could easily see it being the primary driver in a gamer's setup. The only time you could have a problem is if you're the type of person that listens REALLY loud... we played it at what felt loud for me and I never heard this happen, but the Smyth guys say that sometimes the membrane will move so much that it can hit the magnet grill.The Stax earspeakers have a different kind of plug and require speaker-like amplification power, but the SRS-3100 kit includes both a headset and amplifier for $749, and it's achievements in sound quality belong in comparisons to summit-fi headphones like the HD800 and HE 1000... seriously! In the hi-fi $300-$1000 price category, you usually need a good amp to coax out the better performance of the headphone anyway, so $750 for the kit is very reasonable. I find the HD800 more comfortable to wear for 5+ hour marathon sessions, but sonically the L300 is right up there and has amazing reaction speed and transparency to the source.
MrSpeakers
ÆON. I saw this closed headphone everywhere. And it has me reconsidering my closed headphone plans. Dan from MrSpeakers put all his learning and latest technology into this model, and yet priced it competitively close to materials and labor cost. The modified teardrop shape (or half heart shaped? For Valentines Day?) looks less enormous in public and nestles nicely around the neck, making perhaps one of the best sounding closed headphones you can wear on the go, in public. I totally heard what
Stillhart wrote about in his
ÆON review on AudioHead, and I feel you get a ton of that Ether C Flow goodness for $1000 off. I don't know how I forgot to take a picture of the ÆON, but I do have a pic of the desirable (but more expensive) Ether Flow.
Bluetooth, DSPs, and Doo-Dads
There were a fair share of interesting accessories meant to enhance the way we listen to audio. I find accessories to show the most innovation and glimpses of the future of audio.
Shanling Audio
Ok, so, not traditionally gaming-focused, but their mini-sized
M1 portable audio player has a special extra feature that may interest some gamers. As a DAP, the M1 has a decent interface, supports DSD, can be used as a DAC/AMP when connected to a PC using a USB-C cable (USB-C to USB-A cable included), and sounds pretty good with portable headphones that don't require too much power. It also can connect to Bluetooth headphones/speakers, using the latest APT-X protocols. What's intriguing about it is it also can connect to a Bluetooth source, like an iPhone 7, or a Bluetooth USB dongle connected to a PlayStation 4 or PC. If you don't need chat, the $149 ShanLing M1 can be a wireless Bluetooth bridge for IEMs and portables, while also serving as a standalone DAP on the go or a tiny music transport to feed a Mojo or something with lossless DSD files. Can Anyone say "baby Poly?"
This scrappy 2 man company from French Canada is also looking to make a Bluetooth bridge between your traditional 3.5mm headphones and digital sources. Again, you would need a decent Bluetooth USB dongle to transmit from your PlayStation 4, but then this "half-pen-plus-a-Bic-lighter" looking receiver can clip to your lapel and act as a microphone while sending the audio to your 3.5mm-equipped headphones. It's modest in size and thus amplification power, but the amp is designed without capacitors and has a very short, direct circuit between the DAC and headphone jack, and sounded great powering a pair of purpleheart Massdrop x Fostex TH-X00 closed headphones they had on display. Decent impact, very clean and background hiss free, and had plenty of life and meat to the sound compared to the dull anemic sound I've heard from headphones if they were underpowered. They're perfecting their volume dial (which is the part that makes me think of a Bic lighter). I said it would be fine if they just connected the wheel to a digital volume control, but they said they really wanted the feel of a well-dampened analog control, so ALRIGHT you crazy bastards
This
indegogo campaign pre-order sounds good which is an important foundation.
THX
bwuuuuuuoooooOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!
Famous for their sound design in Star Wars and many movies since, and also a collaborator with Creative Labs on their Recon3D USB processor unit which I highly liked, THX decided to make their show presence known with an unassuming, small, engineer's test-bench looking amplifier. Why am I bothering mentioning it for gamers? One: it has incredibly low distortion levels and has amazing crispness. It sounds really good, eerily similar in character Questyle's big desktop amps. Two: even their top of the line AAA-888 topology is really, really small for the amount of power output. In my picture below, the essential "amp" part of that circuit is just the stuff inside the white box with the label "AAA-888 MODULE," and that's their biggest module. And they're licensing the design to anyone... DAP manufacturers, Bluetooth headphone and transmitter manufacturers, possibly even headphone manufacturers that want to integrate an amp soldered directly to the transducer magnets inside the headphone like the $55,000 Sennheiser Orpheus did... Fuhgeddabout it! As cool as that last possibility would be, I would love to see another collaboration with Creative Labs or anyone else to make a DSP product about the size of a Turtle Beach DSS but with desktop-quality sound to it, and that seems like a very real possibility in the near future.
Oh man guys. OH. MAN. Definitely my meet highlight! So, I had been saying how in theory the Realiser should be the culmination of this thread, that the way this portrays directional cues customized to your head and brain should be better than anything else... and the reality is, this blew away my expectations. I'll make a YouTube video on the how (had a nice interview with the Smyth guys,
might be able to grab them on the phone sometime or something too), but for now I'll just give the high-level version. Unlike most other surround DSPs, the Smyth does three things:
1. Records and measures what any position or pitch sounds like by the time it reaches the opening of YOUR ear.
2. Records and measures what any pitch from YOUR headphone sounds like by the time it reaches the opening of YOUR ear.
3. Measures your head's angle as you turn vertically or horizontally.
If you measure everything and have transparent enough headphones, it doesn't just process good front and rear cues... it recreates the EXACT sonic experience of the speakers and room you did the measurements in. Yes, in all caps!
During the demo, they had the speakers set up to start playing the moment I angled the headphones down enough to have them off my ears, and there was no gap between the moment I was hearing the headphones and speakers. This created an eerie sensation where I had to ask the Smyths and my buddy
MTMECraig when they stopped hearing the speakers after I put the Sfax SR-L300 back on, because I could not tell when it crossed over. Forget about a headphone's (small) peaks and sucked out regions; the Realiser's EQ was go into make that frequency curve sound just like the speakers tested.
Directionality was summit too. There wasn't any live gaming sessions available (missed op!), and the pre-recorded demo of some Star Wars Battlefront gameplay wasn't the best demo of imaging because all the action was in front, the Smyth's steered me towards a Mad Max video clip that was not unlike an arcade-y racing game. Cars blasted up from behind (Doppler effect in the recording sounding very real), roamed out front in the distance (before exploding and rolling), and created an "out of the head" experience with a large soundstage that was unique to this DSP.
I know this product is expensive, but I would LOVE to take a measurement of one über speaker inside an anechoic chamber (good job spelling that Siri!) at all 16 Ambisonics positions (which would be easier to do than it sounds, so long as I could get ahold of the speaker) so that the walls and room acoustics would disappear. I'm thankful that I got in on the kickstarter price for this, but hopefully others get to experience this too, and maybe other equipment manufacturers choose to take up the small licensing fee Smyth is offering to use their DSP software (and maybe a small handful of generic PRIR archetypes?) in a smaller scale product more accessible to younger gamers' budgets, because this is a must-hear experience.
Soooo many style points for me with that Stax picture, haha!
Seminar on VR
To Be Added... it's late guys!!
Some of the overall cool trends from the show, seemed to be that this was a year of manufacturers listening to customer's desires. Yeah, there's the über high priced summit-fi products, but finally I was seeming some excellent entries in the $300-$1000 price range that previously had only a few models, including some that were hard to justify at their asking price. The closed-back ÆON from MrSpeakers is $1000 less expensive than the (previously reviewed in the first post of this thread) Ether C on launch and their current C Flow model, and feels like a high-fi model and well worth the $799 asking price, but there were also very impressive IEM models from 64 Audio, Empire Ears, 1More, Echobox, and more that also put out a lot of performance for people looking to outperform the mid-fi, $100-$300 price tier without jumping straight to the +$1000 summit-fi tier. It was also warm-and-fuzzy seeing headphone companies make sure that they shared headphones for use at amp/DAC manufacturer's tables, vice versa, and cables and amp makers creating products to be sold in collaboration with other manufacturers. Sure, there was competition, but unlike politics I personally witnessed everyone talking about what made their products great or unique without bashing another company, and recommending other synergistic products if there wasn't a conflict of interest (So many Mojos, ÆONs, Comply Tips, and third party cables around the floor!). Very much like New York City, the place was simply packed with people, enthusiasm, and expensive but affordable really good stuff.
thanks again!!
You should do that next time, the videos especially. I think they rock, but I'm highly biased. Smyth themselves also sent out multiple emails confirming that the A16 demo would be at the show.
Mr. Speakers Aeon seems like it would be a good choice too for only $200 more at the pre order price. 
